Our Brilliant Stupid Brain.

Before you get all excited, I assure you that I stand in awe of the human brain. I am amazed at it's capabilities, but I'm also amazed at it's limitations.

The most amazing thing about the brain, for us Kinetic Golfers, is that it will believe EVERYTHING it is told. That's a double edged sword. If you tell your brain that you can't possibly make the next shot, it's going to believe you and find a way of making the statement true. Conversely if you tell it you can, it will make it happen. Try it next time you're out on the course! But I bet you've already proved the paradigm for yourself: Have you ever been in a situation where you're in the middle of the fairway, you're looking at a hazard somewhere in your field of vision and said "Don't hit the water!" If that was your last thought before you took the swing, did the ball magically find it's way to the hazard? "But wait! I thought you said the brain would adjust!!" I hear you crying. It did. But that's where the stupid part comes in. The brain does NOT process the negative. So the brain heard "Hit the Water!" and did it. Amazing huh?

I'm sure you've heard this before, it's a basic tenet of Neural Linguistic Programing (NLP): Never make negative statements. To oversimplify: "Don't fail!" will always be interpreted as "Fail!" Which means that we need to make sure we make positive statements to our brains. In other words "Hit the green" or "Hit the fairway" and the brain will do it's level best to make it happen.

There's another way to exploit our brain. If we imagine something often enough, the brain will be convinced that it's actually happened. So, while sitting in your living room, put yourself on your nemesis hole, the one that you always blow on your favorite course. In your mind, stand on the tee and see the layout, make it as vivid as you can (what's it smell like, what's the light doing, what's the wind doing, what are you hearing?) Picture yourself taking the perfect practice swing, feel the perfect coordination of all the elements of your swing. Now stand over the ball, repeat that swing exactly the same way as your practice swing. Feel the buttery soft impact of the ball leaving the club face because you've hit the perfect stroke (and of course, you've watched the ball at impact and know that your club face hit dead square on, and you know exactly where your tee went, right?) and now you look up to see the ball land and roll to the perfect fairway placement. Repeat the process for your approach shot. Repeat the process for your birdie putt. Start over from the Tee. If you do this often enough, when you get to the course the brain will absolutely believe that this is how you've always played this hole and will make you do it. A word of caution though: be careful not to get in it's way. Any thoughts of doubt on the tee will destroy the magic. I recommend that you reverse the process when you get on the Tee: think of yourself sitting comfortably in your living room thinking about this hole and how many times you've made birdie here.

Let me know how you make out. Our brain is probably the most underutilized tool in our game!

Posted via email from Kinetic Golfer